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Time

Infinitude

Eternity

  1. All of time past or time to come, or both jointly; infinite time, without a beginning or an end.

  2. Timelessness; a state to which time has no application; the condition into which the soul enters at death; the afterlife (metaphysical). Oxford Dictionary

The first definition is the actual; the latter the wishful and imaginary hope of a ‘self’ being fearful of death. The fact of time being eternal – without a beginning or an end – has produced some of the most convoluted thinking and imagination known to humankind. The fact so boggles the minds of scientists that they are forced to invent all sorts of spurious meta-physical theories, such as ‘space-time continuums’, ‘bent time’, ‘black holes’, ‘cyclic time’, ‘time reversing universes’, etc. rather than acknowledge the fact. The mystics and shamans ply similar other-worldly theories, lapped up by those souls eager for their message and desirous of securing a ticket to ‘eternity’, some mythical dwelling place of their ‘eternal souls’.

For scientists, the fact of eternity negates the myth of a creation-event for the ‘beginning’ or a doomsday-event for the ‘ending’ of the physical universe. For the mystics, the fact of eternity negates the myth of a creator-God, a doomsday-God, or a Greater Eternity.

Eternity allows no before time, no after time or no other time – an uncomfortable fact for an alien entity trapped within a mortal flesh and blood body to acknowledge. The only direct experience of the eternal nature of time is that experienced in the PCE, and the experience is so overwhelming that it is usually misinterpreted in spiritual terms.

The experience of time in a PCE is one of being fully alive, here, now, without the time-line continuum of any emotional memory of the psychological and psychic entity that is usually interpreting this moment of being alive. With no past or future as ‘I’ normally experience ‘my’ life as consisting of, there is only this moment to experience. It is impossible to experience the moment just passed and it is impossible to experience a future moment – for when it comes, it will be this moment. This is not to deny the passage of time or the movement of the clock or the sun in the sky. The physical universe is eternal and yet is happening only at this moment of time.

This experience of the immediacy of the actual, eternally existing only in this moment, is corrupted and personified by those suffering from an Altered State of Consciousness into a feeling of Timelessness. The Deluded Ones imagine that they, and not the universe, are eternal, giving rise to the impassioned feeling that they are Immortal – in short, not a mortal flesh and blood mortal being, but a God.

The experience of being located ‘in time’ – of being only able to experience this moment of being alive – is to directly experience both the eternal and infinite nature of the universe. Without a ‘self ’, one is always here and it is always now.

Freedom from the Human Condition – Happy and Harmless

© The Actual Freedom Trust